Sticky Notes

What it is

Floating scratch-pad notes that persist across sessions and app restarts. Each note is draggable, resizable, and color-coded. Notes live in a portal overlay above the main UI and are toggled from the toolbar.

Where to find it

UI Surface

• Toolbar icon — the sticky-note icon in the top-right toolbar pill (visible when the feature is enabled in Settings → Features → "Enable Sticky Notes", default on). The icon lights up in accent color when notes are visible.
• First click — if no notes exist yet, the toolbar click creates the first one and shows the overlay. Subsequent clicks toggle visibility on/off. The overlay's open/closed state persists to localStorage so it survives renderer reloads.
• Note title bar — each note has a drag handle (grip icon) on the left and four buttons on the right: + (new note, offset from current), palette (6-color picker), – (minimize to a small chip), × (delete, behind a confirm).
• Closing the last note hides the overlay — deleting the final remaining note turns the overlay off (the toolbar icon un-highlights) rather than leaving an empty portal with no reachable "New note" button. The feature stays enabled; clicking the toolbar icon again brings the overlay back and mints a fresh note. The auto-close writes through the same stickyNotesOverlayOpen path as the toolbar toggle, so it survives a reload.
• Content area — a textarea with auto-save (500ms debounce). Placeholder text ("Write something...") disappears on focus. Text and icon colors auto-adjust for contrast against the note's background color.
• Resize handle — three dots in the bottom-right corner; drag to resize (120–800px width, 100–800px height).
• Minimized state — collapses to a small 48×32 chip at the note's position. Drag to reposition; click (without dragging) to expand.
• Settings search — searchable as "sticky", "notes", "notepad", "scratchpad", "memo", "post-it", etc.

How it behaves

Scope

• Desktop-rendered, but CLI-reachable. Each note is an absolutely-positioned, draggable, resizable overlay widget keyed to on-screen pixel coordinates, so the overlay is desktop-bound — but the note DATA is not. The localhost CLI control server serves GET /sticky-notes, POST /sticky-notes, PATCH /sticky-notes/:id and DELETE /sticky-notes/:id (src/main/services/cli/cli-server-sticky-notes-routes.ts), so an AI or automation can list, create, edit and delete notes. Each write emits STICKY_NOTES_CHANGED, which an open overlay picks up via the live-sync subscription — including an external delete that empties the list, which hides the overlay the same way closing the last note by hand does.

For agents

Architecture

Data Model

sticky_notes SQLite table (migration v172):

Column	Type	Default	Notes
id	TEXT PK	UUID
content	TEXT	''	Max 10,000 chars (Zod)
position_x	INTEGER	100	0–10,000
position_y	INTEGER	100	0–10,000
width	INTEGER	240	120–800
height	INTEGER	200	100–800
color	TEXT	#FFF9E6	Hex #RRGGBB
is_minimized	INTEGER	0	Boolean
created_at	TEXT	ISO timestamp
updated_at	TEXT	ISO timestamp

IPC Channels

Channel	Schema	Response
sticky-notes:list	{}	{ notes: StickyNote[] }
sticky-notes:create	content, positionX/Y, width/height, color (all optional)	{ id: string }
sticky-notes:update	id + any updatable field	{}
sticky-notes:delete	{ id }	{}
sticky-notes:changed	Push event (no payload)	—

Key Files

Layer	File	Purpose
Migration	src/main/db/incremental-migrations.ts	v172 CREATE TABLE sticky_notes
Queries	src/main/db/queries-sticky-notes.ts	CRUD (list, create, update, delete)
IPC handlers	src/main/ipc/sticky-notes-handlers.ts	Zod-validated wrapHandler + push
Shared types	src/shared/types.ts	StickyNote interface, stickyNotesEnabled in AppSettings
Shared channels	src/shared/ipc-channels/	5 channel constants
Shared schemas	src/shared/ipc-schemas.ts	Zod schemas for all 4 mutations
Store	src/renderer/src/stores/sticky-notes-store.ts	Zustand store (load, toggleOpen, CRUD)
Widget	src/renderer/src/features/sticky-notes/StickyNoteWidget.tsx	Individual note UI
Overlay	src/renderer/src/features/sticky-notes/StickyNotesOverlay.tsx	Portal container
Settings	src/renderer/src/features/settings/sections/features/feature-rows.tsx	Toggle row
Toolbar	src/renderer/src/features/toolbar/toolbar-items.ts	Item definition
Toolbar render	src/renderer/src/features/toolbar/ToolbarPinnedItem.tsx	Switch case
App wiring	src/renderer/src/App.tsx	Lazy overlay + toolbar prop threading
Tests	tests/unit/db/queries/queries-sticky-notes.test.ts	4 CRUD unit tests

Color Contrast

The widget uses luminance-based color selection. isLightColor() computes perceived brightness via the ITU-R BT.601 formula. Light backgrounds get dark text (#1a1a1a), dark backgrounds get light text (#f5f5f5). All icons, placeholder text, resize dots, and the text cursor follow the same rule — no Tailwind CSS-var colors are used on the note surface.

Default Colors

Six pastel presets: yellow (#FFF9E6), blue (#E6F9FF), green (#E6FFE6), pink (#FFE6F0), purple (#F0E6FF), orange (#FFE6D5).

Related

• Scratchpads — the other note-taking surface in Omniscio: persistent notes that live in a pane and feed the global search, rather than notes that float over the window.